A Message from the President

Welcome to the website of the Russell Kirk Center.

Russell and Annette Kirk

We hope that visitors to this site will be inspired to discover more about the life and thought of Russell Kirk and about the work of the Center that carries forward his legacy today. Russell believed deeply that civilization can only thrive when there is, in the words of Edmund Burke, a partnership of “those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born.”

Russell saw his mission as conveying to America’s rising generations an understanding of the process by which a healthy culture is transmitted from age to age. Today, this mission is continued in the work of the Russell Kirk Center, which promotes, through its publications, seminars, and fellowships, an appreciation of the “permanent things” that maintain and nurture our civil social order.

You will find on this website information about Russell’s life and writings and about the various projects that we administer here at the Center. There are links that will enable you to find and purchase books by Russell Kirk, subscribe to the Center’s publications, and learn more about our academic programs.

If you would like to support us in our work of intellectual and cultural renewal, please contact us for information on how to make a donation to the Center.

Sincerely,

Annette Y. Kirk

The moral imagination is the principal possession that man does not share with the beasts. It is man’s power to perceive ethical truth, abiding law, in the seeming chaos of many events. Without the moral imagination, man would live merely day to day, or rather moment to moment, as dogs do. It is the strange faculty—inexplicable if men are assumed to have an animal nature only—of discerning greatness, justice, and order, beyond the bars of appetite and self-interest.

Russell Kirk, Enemies of the Permanent Things, 1969

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News and Events

Colson on Kirk

We were pleased to note Chuck Colson referencing Russell Kirk so warmly, and correctly noting Dr. Kirk’s rejection of ideology, in a commentary from June 6, 2008 titled “True Conservatism.”

Jul 2008

Defending the Conversation

In the newest of the Bookman‘s web-only content, James Seaton reviews Anthony Kronman’s stirring defense of a traditional liberal-arts education. Click here for the review!

Jun 2008

Kirk on Eliot

A new edition of Dr. Kirk’s acclaimed literary biography, Eliot and His Age: T. S. Eliot’s Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century is being published in July 2008 by ISI Books.

Jun 2008

Eliot Conference

The Kirk Center is co-sponsoring a conference on T. S. Eliot on August 14–16, 2008 in conjunction with the new edition of Dr. Kirk’s book, Eliot and His Age. See the conference page for details.

May 2008

Healy Interview

The Bookman has just posted an interview with Gene Healy, author of the new book, The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power.

May 2008

New Bookman

University BookmanThe new Spring issue of the University Bookman is out and the full contents are posted on our site. The issue is devoted to the art of biography with reviews of new books on Ralph Adams Cram (by Dan McCarthy), Orestes Brownson, conservative luminary Gerhart Niemeyer, and others. Subscribe here.

Apr 2008